ABSTRACT
If analytical methods are at the heart of biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing, then protein concentration methods are the workhorse assays. A time and motion study of the discovery, development, and manufacture of a protein-based product would probably confirm the most frequently performed assay to be protein concentration. In the 1940s Oliver H. Lowry developed the Lowry method while attempting to detect miniscule amounts of substances in blood. In 1951 his method was published in the
Journal of Biological Chemistry
.
In 1996 the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) reported that this article had been cited almost a quarter of a million times, making it the most cited research article in history. This statistic reveals the ubiquity of protein measurement assays and the resilience of an assay developed over 60 years ago. The Lowry method remains one of the most popular colorimetric protein assays in biopharmaceutical development, although many alternative assays now exist.
